


A Pause Between Bullet Points

by Muccamukk



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Advice, Emotionally Repressed, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, everyone has a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-31 01:16:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12121377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Leia is busy; Rey needs advice.





	A Pause Between Bullet Points

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Ladies' Bingo Square: Character Death (reference to a lot of people.)

Leia had a thousand and one things to do, or so she kept telling herself, and no one of them was going to be helping Chewie load the _Falcon_. In fact, none of them were going to involve going anywhere in eyesight of the _Falcon_. She would see it off, but that was tomorrow's problem.

Today's problems would be starting to source replacement X-Wings now that most of the New Republican fleet lay in ashes, and sourcing a list of the dead when half her pilots and uncalculated billions were on it but Leia still had to tell Poe what kind of fighter screen he needed to keep in the air in case the First Order regrouped, and that people kept bursting into tears, and that she couldn't be one of them.

She'd made a list, broken it down, and planned to work through or delegate each task until she needed to make a new list. Or until the next person showed up to cry on her shoulder.

That looked like it was going to be that desert girl he had found. She was standing in the doorway to Leia's office, feet spread wide like she was ready to fight or spring away, one hand fussing with the edge of her sleeve. Someone had at least gotten the child some new clothes, probably the first she'd owned, now that Leia thought of it.

She was going to need to say something nice, probably, which was the last thing Leia wanted to hear, but she took a breath and told Rey to come in.

Rey took a step and a half, enough to close the door, and then tucked one of her feet up behind her ankle, balancing, still unsure. Leia waited.

"They say Luke Skywalker is your brother," she said.

 _They_ were presumably the pilots: the worst gossips in the Resistance.

"He is," Leia replied. She hesitated, not knowing what context Rey wanted, then settled on, "We grew up on different worlds, and met when we were older." When they were children like Rey, and how she'd loved him. "Why?"

"I want to know what will he say when I find him."

Leia had to censor the first three things she thought, mostly to the point of he better have a good apology worked up, after all that time. "He may not want to talk to you at all," she answered. He certainly wasn't talking to Leia, and she wasn't sure what she could say now in any case. "But I know that he'll do the right thing in the end."

"Even if it's too late?" Rey asked, and the edge of anger in her voice made Leia blink. They both looked away at the same moment, Leia to the reports in front of her, and Rey to take in the clutter filling the office.

"Child," Leia said at last, "if you're still breathing, it's not too late."

"Me?" Rey asked.

"You, your young Stormtrooper, Poe and his pilots, everyone on this base and in the rest of the galaxy." Ben, even Leia herself. "Losing something you love doesn't mean it's too late to fight for what's left."

Rey met Leia's gaze for a moment, then looked down at her sleeves, tugging at first one than the other and shifting her weight form foot to foot. Again, Leia waited.

Finally, Rey said, "When I find Luke Skywalker, I will tell him that." Then she turned and left.

"Do," Leia told the door, before returning to today's list.


End file.
